Historically, it has proven difficult to effectively and efficiently remove substantial amounts of floating debris, or contaminants, from the ocean and other bodies of water. Some variables that may hinder such recovery efforts include the large amount of debris often needed to be recovered, the rapid speed at which the debris spreads, the effect of wind, waves, rough seas and other environmental factors on the recovery operations and the limited size and/or capacity of existing recovery vessels.
In the offshore oil spill recovery arena, for example, various existing oil skimmers are believed to be unable to separate out significant amounts (or any) of the collected oil from sea water and thus have limited oil recovery capacity. Other existing oil skimmers attempt to separate the recovered oil from sea water, but are slow and thus largely ineffective at recovering substantial volumes of oil.
It should be understood that the above-described features, capabilities and disadvantages are provided for illustrative purposes only and are not intended to limit the scope or subject matter of the appended claims or those of any related patent application or patent. Thus, none of the appended claims or claims of any related application or patent should be limited by the above discussion or construed to address, include or exclude each or any of the above-cited features, capabilities or disadvantages merely because of their mention above.
Accordingly, there exists a need for improved systems, apparatus and methods useful in connection with debris recovery operations having one or more of the attributes or capabilities described or shown in, or as may be apparent from, the other portions of this patent.